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TRUST ME…YOU’LL LOVE THIS: clean slate
There is nothing more invigorating, revitalizing and inspiring than the promise of a brand new year. While I am not one to make new year’s “resolutions” as such, I am all for mapping out new projects, getting (and staying) organized, adopting better/healthier habits and vowing to stop and smell more roses. We’ll see how the latter goes….but back to the clean slate!
In the shops as well as in my own home, I love taking this opportunity to restore order after a busy holiday season and to give everything a deep clean. We live in a grove of hardwoods and with the trees now fully bare, I want our fishbowl of a house with all of its windows to sparkle! There is so much beauty in the bare simplicity of this season – it deserves to gleam! If you’ve not explored The Laundress’ remarkable range of household cleaning products, you are in for a treat. Most all of us in the shop are hooked on one or more of their brilliant concentrated, non-toxic, eco-friendly solutions and at the risk of sounding like an infomercial, we would love to share our personal cleaning experiences if you are interested – just ask! We truly LOVE this brand!!! And your house will sparkle like never before!
As for organization, Marie Kondo’s unique KonMari Method of tidying up is a simple yet powerful approach to resolving clutter, one category at a time. Her first book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” has become a worldwide sensation, and I recall sitting in an airport on the way to NY market last winter and it seemed like everyone around me was engrossed in this book! In her follow-up “Spark Joy,” Kondo presents an in-depth, illustrated manual on how to declutter and organize specific items throughout the house, from kitchen and bathroom items to work-related papers and hobby collections. Both are great reads – or re-reads – for the start of a new year and we have restocked both in Nest.
I love a blank canvas of a room, a new sketchbook, the clean pages of my new daytimer, and can never pass on a beautiful new journal. Although I’ve not found the time to be dedicated to journaling, I enjoy “looking back and taking stock” so whoever came up with the idea of the Line-A-Day journals took a page from my book. These five-year journals are looking to you for one line a day, and are set up so you can reflect on what was going on in your life from year to year on a day by day basis. This is a wonderful gift for someone starting a new job, a new project, a new relationship, a new family – or simply a new year. We gave this journal to my stepson and his wife when they first bought their farm in upstate NY, and it thrilled me to see the journal on their kitchen window sill where they had been religiously logging a line a day throughout the building of their busy farm and family life. Such a keepsake.
Take advantage of these slower, quieter months to restore, renew, reset and recharge. Trust me…..you will love the empowerment that comes with a clean slate!